KITTYSTRONG

Last night, I was lying down on my sofa, with one cat, Malka, behind my head, another cat, Motek, in my right arm and a third, Sammy, in my left (that is until he lept out of my arms as captured on my phone by my daughter as he was in mid-flight).

Quite a picture, yes?

I looked up at my father, who had come over for dinner, and said, “Holy shit! I’m the Crazy Cat Lady!” He smirked and glibly said, “You always were,” as he left for his home.

I’m really not, though. I’ve been accused of being one by an ex-boyfriend, but that’s because he didn’t like cats. And being a single woman with cats doesn’t automatically put you into that category. I don’t have ramps and all kinds of weird structures to accommodate the cats in every room. I don’t have kitty houses all over. Yes, I do have 2 kitty litters on each floor of the house, but that’s because when you have four cats, you need to have two.

Yes. Four cats. It’s not what you think.

I have a 15-year old cat named Schmooie (Schmooella Daniella). (No, I didn’t name her “Schmooie,” she came with that name.) She’s a breast cancer survivor – no joke. In 2005, she had a quadruple mastectomy. She was my ex-husband’s cat – we got her when she was 6-months old. Until recently, she would spend 75% of her time outside – it was agony to keep her indoors. Lately, she’s been relatively content being an indoor cat, thank goodness. So she was kind of an absentee cat. So, yes, while I own four cats, I never really considered her ours – she was very much her own cat.

Malka was “gifted” to us a couple of years ago. A former friend, who was a little more than psycho, decided she had to get a kitten to keep her solitary cat and her young son company. I urged her to reconsider, as it seemed to come out of left field, but she insisted. She asked me to accompany her to pick out a kitten as someone who has had cats all her life. I found a kitten in the litter with an amazing personality, with great potential to be a loving lap cat and one that got along with the other kittens. She, however, chose to ignore my recommendations altogether and went for the psycho kitty, who seemed to show great disdain towards all the other cats, and was female. Her logic? This kitten was the only one who didn’t have six toes (which I thought was kind of cool – the entire litter but this one was six-toed). I warned her one last time that I didn’t think this was the best companion kitten, but she didn’t listen.

Sure enough, 48-hours later, she was on my doorstep, handing the kitten to my daughter saying, “Here! Look! It’s a present for you!” and I was stuck with her. Malka was now my daughter’s kitten – and my daughter is the only person whom this cat adores. She despises my son – his mere entrance into a room can cause her to hiss and growl and even attack his ankles.

Motek is the newest addition to the family after Hurricane Sandy. His story, as it was told to us, was that he was abandoned by his former owners and left in the hurricane. When we learned about his plight, and saw his sweet personality, we had to adopt him. Since Malka is my daughter’s cat, Motek became my son’s, though he seems to have claimed my bedroom as his domain.

And that leaves Samson. My Samson. (Well, technically, He’s Samson the II. My grandmother had a pair of cats - Samson & Delilah - Samson being a red tabby, Delilah a grey. Samson I became my cat when she passed away. There was something, when Samson II was a kitten, that was so much like Samson I, that I knew I'd mistakenly call him Samson, so I decided, "The hell with it, I'll just name him Samson II after Samson I.") A little more than a year ago, my big, grey, teddy bear of a cat, Raouw, had to be put down. I was trolling the internet just looking for places in the area from which we could adopt a cat when we were ready. Then, I saw this photo:

What a shayna punim?!

I wasn’t planning on getting a new cat immediately – I wanted time to mourn Raouwsiebear. However, when I saw this face, I was in love. Super Bowl Sunday, we went to a pet shop to meet the woman coordinating the adoptions, and went into the large bathroom with her, the kids and a pet carrier. The minute she opened the carrier doors, this lovely lion of a kitten walked out, with the confidence of someone who just won the Presidential election, and he marched into my lap, purring loudly, and curled up and looked me in the eyes. Within minutes, we were buying him food, a collar and toys.

Why is this relevant?

When people say that I’m a “Crazy Cat Lady,” I know in my heart that I’m not. If anything, I’m a very sane person because of these little four-legged (five-toed) furry family members.

In case you hadn’t seen the reports, the kindness and healing that these purring bundles of joy provide to people is remarkable, so much so that after the Newtown shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, an organization brought kittens to provide therapy to the children and anyoneneeding support. Cats are the only animal on the planet that have a functionthat is strictly meant to express happiness – purring. And studies show that those with cats tend to have lower levels of stress and fewer heart attacks than those without cats. The act of simply stroking a cats fur has a healing ability.

There is no question, whatsoever, that my ability to recovery from the blow of hearing that I had cancer would not have been handled as well had it not been for the affection of my cats. When I came home from the hospital after my mastectomy, as I’ve described previously, my cat Raouw didn’t leave my side for days – all he did was curl up with me, purr, kiss me, and sleep. Even Malka slept with me. Schmooie would curl up on my pillow behind my head. Collectively, they all cared for me in their own very unique ways.

During chemotherapy, when I felt at my worst, I could tell that Malka sensed something was wrong with me, but she was confused. Raouwsie, however, wouldn’t cease contact with me, going so far as to keep me lying down when I was tempted to get up so I could rest.

Once Raouw was gone, Sammy, in his own clumsy, bad ass way, cared for me. Though he doesn’t have half the patience Raouw had to sleep in my lap, or sit still for long cuddle sessions, he’d pay attention to me, clown around, and keep me entertained. And Sammy still showered me with loud purrs and sloppy kisses when I had various reconstructive surgeries and, when I wasn’t looking, would curl up and sleep next to me so I would wake up with a face full of ginger fur and the soothing vibration of his purr.

My, how time flies...

Sometimes, it's weird how time flies.

Sunday, 1 year ago, I had my double mastectomy. 1 year and 2 days ago, I still had my breasts, nipples, normal sensation, etc. Now? I have foreign parts installed, tissue that's technically my own flesh and blood, but feel nothing, let alone hardly feel a part of me, and a strange numbing feeling in my chest.

I think Sunday, far more than my cancerversary, signaled that it's been a year since I felt "normal." Even knowing I had cancer in my body, I still felt whole. I still felt like myself. Once the scalpels invaded my skin, once parts of me were carved up and discarded, replaced by synthetic prosthesis, I became something... someone... else. I think the question still looms, who or what have I become?

The obvious response, given the context of this blog is, "SURVIVOR." But I'm not so sure about that. "Recoverer," yes. I recovered from surgery. I recovered from the infections.

But I didn't survive - at least, I'm not sure that I have. My breasts didn't survive. My hair didn't survive. My feelings and senses didn't survive. Most of the skin in my chest area survived.

My strength didn't survive. My cycling and athletics haven't survived... not yet. My ability to find ways to bounce back better than before hasn't surfaced, yet. I'm struggling to do it.

And I can't find a way to embrace the new boobs, yet. Perhaps if my nerve endings were still functional, I could. Or if everytime I flex a muscle, they didn't ripple and bounce around like a freakish body builder, I might be able to start. They still don't look like breasts.  One is larger than the other, one is fuller than the other, the horizontal scars are still visible, and have left some strange sculpting. They nipples still look like Frankenboob. Forget the cancer: If I had breasts like this before, I'd be seeking reconstruction.

By no means am I saying that Dr. Nordberg did a bad job - not at all! He did a great job, given what the task at hand was. The left side that is fuller and bigger is that way because of the scar tissue, etc - it was problematic from the beginning. The right side just settled the way that it did. And he's trying to fix things, but this is going to be a long time until it's close to where I envision being able to begin to accept them as being a part of me.

And my hair, oh, my hair. Yes, I'm not bald. But bald was a "cooler" look than what I have going on now. I look like a retarded Little Orphan Annie. Yes, it's great that I have the curls that I paid (well, my parents paid) for when I was in high school and didn't quite get. But they don't go anywhere. They curl in on themselves and don't grow down. It's like having a head of ingrown curly hairs. I touch my head and I feel a sheep, not my hair.

So, neither my breasts nor my hair feel like "me."

I don't know.

One year later, and I still feel so far away from really recovering, let alone surviving.

For my personal journey, the cancer was the easy part - it was caught before it caused any pain. Yes, I survived the cancer, I suppose. But what I'm really struggling to survive is the surgery, the treatment, the chemo, the after-effects, the recovery, the butchery.

Patience is a virtue learned...

I was a child of the instant gratification generation long before the internet, affordability of overnight shipping, text messaging and Twitter. Impatience defined my first 23 years. As soon as I was ready for something, I expected it. Now. I saw no virtue in waiting for the inevitable.

I my adolescence and early adulthood, I rushed to "the point" many times. In relationships, I instigated far more serious commitments too early, either tying me too tightly to the wrong people, or driving them away. As a result, part of me sincerely believes that I killed what should have been a love of a lifetime - one of the only genuine regrets I have in my life.

I first began my lesson not to rush everything in my life when I decided I was old enough to get married at 23. Plain and simple, I was an idiot to believe it. But, I did it, so be it. I got 2 wonderful children out of the marriage, and I had the first cancerous tumor that was sucking the life out of me removed in the divorce - my ex-husband.

When I first started working when I graduated college, there were jobs  a'plenty, so I never went more than a day or two without employment. But, when September 11 burst the economic bubble we were riding on, and everyone and their brother was getting laid off left and right, I didn't get a job as soon as I called my employment agency contacts. I didn't even get an interview. I was making dozens of call a day at the out-sourcing agency my former employer had provided to me, and I was lucky if I got an interview once a week over the phone. During my entire stay there, I had only gotten 2 face-to-face interviews. I was crawling the walls. But, soon, I got a job offer and I took it blindly. I grabbed it. And that's what I did for years - the first job offer I got, I took. I didn't want to risk anything. I didn't know there'd be anything else. And I paid for it, to an extent. I took jobs I should have reconsidered. I made concessions in title and salary that set a precedence. I've only recently learned not to do that. But at a great cost.

All of these stumbling blocks, however, still hadn't quelled my need for wanting what I wanted. Now. I wanted to snap my fingers and have the pieces that I knew would fall into place inevitably to fall already.

Maybe that's why I've settled into project management in one regard or another professionally - either as a Project Manager, or simply implementing timelines, schedules, efficiency and streamlining processes around me with or without invitation.

It's funny how cancer - in every regard - is an absolute slap in this compulsive face. There is no rushing cancer. Cancer, the treatments, the doctors, the recovery, runs on its own time. Everyone knows that G-d created the world in 7 days. My philosophy until cancer was that if G-d could do it in 7 days, than the foolish, mundane demands I had could be easily done within my timelines - I was my own god in my own world - when I declared that it was evening and it was morning with my internet order, my conflict resolution, etc, it was so. Call me Jean-Luc.

But you can't do that with cancer.

I'm reminded of when I was at Bi-Cultural as a young student, and learning - בראשית - the creation story. My teacher explained that, yes, literally, the Torah says Day 1, Day 2, etc. But if that were the case, dinosaurs wouldn't have had time to live and die before Day 6. How do we explain this discrepancy? G-d's days weren't the 24-hours we, humanity, know and live by. Because G-d is infinite, G-d's days could be a millenia. Those 7 "G-d" Days covered the expanse of thousands of years. Even G-d couldn't snap fingers and have things done in a "human" flash.

In July and August, I was calling the shots as best I could. I had a timeline - surgery had to be done before the kids came home from camp. Yes, the tests would take a couple of weeks, which was too long for my taste, but so be it. But things had to be done. Now. And they were. And that's where my timeline went out the proverbial cancer window. Yes, chemo was scheduled around the LIVESTRONG Challenge in Austin in October. But what I wasn't expecting was that my body was still recovering from the surgery, let alone the first bout of chemo. I hadn't thrown up, become frail and ill the second day after chemo - hence, I was fine. Yes, my hair was falling out, and I was a little weaker, but no biggie.

Well, that landed me in the hospital for 2 weeks with an infection, and "benched" from activity. I'm still benched. 5 months later. 2 weeks after my last surgery, and I'm just now getting the drains removed.

Maybe it's been this extended period of time on my butt, not in the saddle, or in walking shoes, for that matter, that has finally taught me the lesson of patience. At least, in some regards. I'd be lying if I said all regards. I still expect stuff I order online to show up on my doorstep within an hour. When I call someone and leave a message, I expect a call back within seconds.

But I'm starting to learn patience.

Don't try mine, yet, though. I'm a work in progress. So have patience with me.

Pink elephants...

Loopedy-loops... feeling floaty... An overwhelming sense of "Aaaaah..." These are the things I'm thankful for a day after my surgery to swap out the expanders for silicone implants. Oh, yes, and did I mention the Percocet? That's good stuff, yo.

I was the source of great amusement to the kids last night as I took a dose before I went to sleep. I understand that I made such little sense that the kids called my folks saying that I wasn't making any sense. My dad had to remind them I'd taken my pain meds, and that's just the way it is. So, they sat back and enjoyed the show.

Now, here I am, floating on pillows of fogginess, feeling no pain (though I can't help but notice the leaking from one of the drain sites - that's a fun feeling), impatiently waiting for the drainage to stop, for the bandages to come off, and the chance to see and mess around with the new twins.